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first, the roots grow around rogier’s bones. he can feel them weaving through the gaps, up, around his knees. then they grow through the muscles. he can feel them twisting. he could still walk, then, using his staff like a cane. without the wielder’s strength to go into battle, it’s all it was good for anyway.
it takes weeks for the roots to start growing inside his arms. it’s not a connected system — they don’t spiral up his spine like he thought they would, they don’t rupture his intestines. like parasites, they settle in areas that won’t kill him immediately but disable him for whatever time he has left.
in months, the thorns start growing. he can feel the stinging before he can see them stretching his skin, and when they do, he presses his hand around his forearm and feels the hardness underneath it, and presses harder, until the thorns tear through his skin between the fingers. there are too many of them to bind the wounds.
he doesn’t get up from the chair, and the blight grows around it too: the wooden legs, the wooden arms, chaining him to it to die. someone brings him a blanket. with it he covers his legs that won’t stop bleeding and won’t stop aching, and the flies that were once buzzing around the piles in dung eater’s room have relocated here.
they bring the noise. they also bring the smell. blood, and death, and shit is all he could smell for weeks, and then it suddenly stopped. he assumed he just got used to it.
he can’t get off the chair and he can’t remove the blanket, now, with his weakened arms, unclenching fingers, and maybe it’s for the best — he doesn’t want to see the maggots in his skin he can feel crawling around the thorns, eating their way through the flesh.
he isn’t numb, which is the worst of all. this kind of pain isn’t something you get used to. he was hoping the roots would get to his spine and paralyze him, but instead they crawl up his sides to his ribs, and though it makes every breath string on their edges, it doesn’t give him the comfort of numbness.
once in a while, he can hear D stir in his armor. though he, unlike rogier, can move freely, most of the time he just sits at the table, and rogier wonders when the gap between them grew so vast that D won’t even talk to him, separated just by a wall, won’t even come near.
rogier was on his own more than he ever was with D, but those years they spent together held importance to them both. it was a mutual decision to part ways; they left in peace, and if rogier ever thought of that time, he thought of it fondly. after, he spent years traveling the castle alone, and during that time he didn’t know where D was and what he was doing. they met again at the roundtable hold when the curse was already progressing.
at night, everything goes quiet. he thinks he can hear them growing. roots replacing tendons, vines growing through the veins and the arteries, thorns becoming ligaments and threading his arms to his shoulders like meat on skewers.
at night, there is no distraction from the pain. he can hear D take off his helm; sometimes, when he sits too close to the open door, he can hear him sigh. he won’t talk to him.
he can’t sleep most nights, but always, eventually, he falls unconscious. it isn’t sleep and isn’t rest, but for those few hours he doesn’t feel the pain or hear the flies, and he’s grateful even for that. one morning he wakes up and finds blood on the floor, on his hands, soaking the blanket. flies stick to it, satisfied. he can’t feel his legs anymore because they have rotted away, and the roots where they used to be have grown so big the blanket can’t hide them anymore. he wonders whether they feed on his flesh too, like the flies.
rogier is only half-surprised when one day D does step through the door. they’ve always shared a connection, and rogier doesn’t need to see him to know D knows he’s dying.
it wasn’t about fighting death anyway. just a matter of time — of vines replacing every part of him. and D has seen it enough to know how long it takes.
so when rogier hears his voice for the first time in what feels like an eternity, he knows he doesn’t have much time left, if the pile of rotten flesh and roots beneath him wasn’t enough of a proof.
are you scared?
rogier turns his head halfway, looks at the familiar curve of silver over gold. with a smile, he shakes his head.
it’s been years but D knew him better than he’s ever known himself. he assumes that not much has changed since then.
“i just want this to be over,” he says. his voice doesn’t shake when he does. D kneels beside him.
“you don’t have much left.”
“i hope.”
D doesn’t take off his helm but he does take off his gauntlets. his hands aren’t those of a knight, but weren’t they all forced into these roles unwillingly? rogier turns his palm up where it lays on the wooden armrest, and though there’s a thorn growing out of it, D holds it anyway.
“are you scared?” rogier asks.
“i’m not the one dying,” D says. but his voice sounds the same as it did when his brother was slowly losing his mind, and rogier knows the answer he doesn’t want to admit.
they sit like this for a while. rogier stirs in his chair, wiping the blood on the blanket.
“can you help me out of it?”
“what?”
“would you take me out of the chair, put me on the floor?” rogier asks again. “if you just cut these few vines…”
D does, and then grabs rogier by the arms, carefully, and slides him off the chair and onto the floor. rogier doesn’t need to hold the blanket for it not to slip off.
when he dies, he at least wants to be comfortable.
D sits beside him, leaning against the wall, while rogier leans against his shoulder. he struggles to breathe.
in the darkness of night he can allow for informality, and he isn’t fully conscious anyway — his mind has been slipping away from him for months. D keeps holding his hand; rogier doesn’t know if it makes him more in pain or eases it. none of this feels entirely real regardless.
he misses the moment when the panic begins setting in. he’s been drifting in and out of sleep for the past several hours, D — an unmoving presence to the left of him. when he wakes up again, he can feel his heart racing, and every time it beats forward against his ribcage, it prickles with pain. the same pain he feels constantly in his arms and what’s left of his legs.
“getting closer?” D asks. rogier’s armor is unbuttoned, a white undershirt soaked in blood covering his chest, rogier looks down on it as an answer. D unbuttons it too with steady fingers, and slides his hand over the heart, warm, though rogier remembers it always being cold, says: “why won’t you ask?”
“to kill me?” rogier pauses and breathes because he can feel the vines locking around his lungs, “i can’t ask you of that, D. it’s not your burden to carry.”
“i would do it, you know. if you asked.”
“i know. i don’t want you to.”
D grabs his arm, gently wraps his fingers against the wrist. his veins aren’t blue but blood red, almost brown, stretching pale skin thin where they push against D’s fingers. rogier won’t die painlessly, but D prays the roots to reach his heart first before the vines start to bloom in his arteries.
they do. the sun just starts to rise when rogier convulses, his throat makes an awful sound, and blood comes out of his mouth. D holds his head up with one hand, threading fingers through his hair, comforting.
rogier sleeps in D’s arms while he’s dying, and it’s the most peace he has known in his life.